1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an image processing device, an image processing method and a program, and more particularly, to an image processing device, an image processing method and a program, which can handle two-dimensional codes.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there have been proposed technologies for copy restriction and history management of documents such as printed matter due to increasing awareness of information security to the documents. For example, there are technologies in which bar codes or two-dimensional codes are added to printed matter to implement the above copy restriction or history management (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2010-200301). According to the technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-200301, two-dimensional codes including output permission information or tracking information of a document are printed together with an image thereof. As a user gives an instruction of copying such printed matter to a multi function peripheral, when the two-dimensional code is checked and the output permission information is included therein, the copying is executed and the tracking information is updated, thus printing a new two-dimensional code. It should be noted that, for recording by whom and when the copying is executed, the tracking information generally includes personal information such as user ID.
However, when the technology of Japanese Patent Laid-Open NO. 2010-200301 is used, it is possible to implement the history management through the tracking information, but since the tracking information includes the personal information such as user ID, there is a possibility that the personal information is leaked from the document. Therefore, there are some cases where it is desired to delete the tracking information. In a case where the tracking information is required to be deleted in this manner, there occurs a problem that a security level of the printed matter is degraded upon simply deleting the tracking information.